A Hickey for Harriet & a Cradle for Caroline

by Nancy Warren

  “So, bring your own date.”

  Caro stared at her friend for a stunned moment. Tess had an almost regal air that made you want to watch your language around her. Normally she was meticulously groomed, but today, her short blond hair was tousled and her blouse sported a wrinkle or two, as though she’d scrambled this morning to get to work.

  Caro felt momentarily depressed that she was so perfectly coiffed and unwrinkled. Nobody was keeping her in bed late in the mornings. Tess’s matter-of-fact strategy echoed in her head until she repeated it out loud. “Bring another date?”

  Apart from the satisfied expression of a woman happy in love, Tess also had a gleam of mischief in her eyes. “Why not? We asked you two to stand up for us, it doesn’t mean you have to show up and leave together.”

  For a long delighted moment, Caro imagined the look on Jonathon’s face when she walked in on another man’s arm. “That is such a great idea. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it.”

  “Well, start thinking.”

  Her glee dimmed rapidly. “Who would I bring? All I could scrape up would be pity dates, and Jon knows all the same people I do.”

  Tess shook her head. “You need the big guns for this one. A movie star would be best.” She tapped her fingers on the varnished wood tabletop. “I interviewed John Cusack last year for a movie he was promoting. I still have his publicist’s phone number.”

  Caro just stared at her.

  “Come on, we’re brainstorming. Every gorgeous man on the planet is up for consideration. Oh, I know.” She leaned forward, her big blue eyes sparkling with excitement. “Didn’t you do a charity fashion show with Hugh Jackman? What about him?”

  Caro shook her head, trying not to laugh. At least she was starting to feel better. “One—he’s married. Two—Australia is a long way from Pasqualie. Three…” She thought hard. “There is no three. He’s the perfect date, except for One and Two.”

  “When you were modeling you hung out with all those beautiful people. There must be someone.”

  “Rupert Everett was a lot of fun.”

  “We’re trying to make Jon jealous here. What about one of those male models with their six-pack abs and stunning biceps.”

  Tess put her head in her hand. It had been such a long time since she’d dated anyone. And as spectacular as a lot of the male models had been, there was no one she’d ever been close friends with, except for…

  She jerked upright and snapped her fingers. “I’ve got it. Andre Giardin.”

  “Never heard of him.” Tess was obviously still daydreaming about movie stars.

  “You’d recognize him if you saw him. He does a lot of magazine work. He’s gorgeous in a real man way, funny, charming and—”

  “Gay?”

  “Not gay. Married.”

  “Does Jon know him?”

  Caro grinned, suddenly filled with enthusiasm for this faux-date idea. Jon had ripped her heart out of her chest and stomped on it. Now he seemed to think all he had to do was call and she’d come crawling back. What he needed was a taste of his own medicine.

  “No. Jon doesn’t know him. Andre and I worked together a lot in New York, but after I moved here and got married, I didn’t see much of him. He also got married, had a couple of kids.”

  “Where does he live now?”

  “Somewhere in Oregon. We’re working on the Fashionistas for Animal Rights show in Seattle. That’s what made me think of him.”

  Tess raised her eyebrows. “You’re modeling?”

  “Sure.”

  “But you never model anymore.”

  “I decided to do this one because it’s a cause I believe in. I wish we’d had a chance to get that animal shelter up and running before Jon and I split up.”

  Tess nodded. “That was a wonderful project and you were both so keen. Couldn’t you still go ahead?”

  “The land belongs to the Standard and it was already rezoned by council especially for the refuge. To start all over again without Jonathon…” She shook her head slowly. “Right now, I simply don’t have the energy. But I can take part in the Fashionistas for Animal Rights, at least, and scoop myself a dream date for your wedding.”

  “This Andre sounds perfect. Will he do it?”

  She shrugged. “He’s always enjoyed practical jokes, and if somebody needs a lesson, yes, I think he’ll do it. Besides, I introduced him to his wife. He owes me.” Caro laughed. “I love it.”

  Tess laughed, too, but not so heartily. “You’re sure about this?”

  “What do you mean? This date was your idea.”

  “I know, it’s just that you and Jonathon…”

  “Are finished.”

  “But you’re both…I don’t know…interested in each other.”

  Caro felt a flash of something she couldn’t name. Somewhere between hope and fury. “Does Jonathon ask you about me?”

  “Only every time I see him.”

  “What do you tell him?”

  Tess rolled her eyes. “What do you think I tell him? I’m your friend. I tell him you’re doing great. Never been happier, blah, blah, blah. You wouldn’t believe the lies I tell.”

  “I am happy.” Caro grabbed hot sauce and squirted it all over her enchiladas.

  “And I’m a brunette.”

  Caro sighed. “Well, I’m as happy as I can be right now.” She sucked up her negative emotions and pulled her shoulders back. “I’m facing the future, not revisiting the past.”

  Tess leaned over and touched her wrist. “I know.”

  “And it absolutely and totally sucks,” she said, gripping her friend’s hand.

  “I don’t think of myself as a cruel woman, but I’d like to take Lori Gerhardt apart.”

  Caro shook her head. “I’ve been reading a lot of self-help books lately. They say you have to put the blame where it belongs. Lori was simply an enabler, but Jon chose infidelity.”

  “Then how come she was next-door-to-naked and he was fully clothed when you found them together?”

  It was too painful to contemplate, so she mostly didn’t. Except at night sometimes when she couldn’t sleep and the scene rose in front of her in every hideous detail.

  “He couldn’t fire her, but Jon got her that job in Houston and made her take it, you know.”

  “Moving forward, not gazing into the past,” Caro mumbled, and stuffed another enchilada in her face.

  There was a pause. “I guess your new career is about the future. How’s it going?”

  Caro glanced up at her friend, grateful for the change of subject. “I love it. Thanks for not telling Jon about my work with the Star. I bumped into him at Fanny’s and he just about swallowed his tie when I told him.”

  “If it makes you happy that’s great. But are you sure you’re not working for the Star merely to drive Jon crazy?”

  “No. I’m working at the Star because I love it. Driving Jon crazy is a side benefit.”

  5

  “CARO, CAN YOU COME IN here a minute?” the Star’s managing editor bellowed through her doorway as Caro passed.

  When she’d first started freelancing for the paper, she’d been appalled at the way Mel managed the news department. Caro had thought the Standard newsroom was chaotic, but it was an oasis of calm next to this place.

  After years of modeling and being a corporate wife, she felt she could handle a smartmouth and a loudmouth, but unfortunately, Mel possessed both.

  However, in her short time here, Caro had come to accept it was simply Mel’s way.

  She usually got her assignments from the features editor, but occasionally Mel would assign her a piece. Caro always trembled slightly in the older woman’s presence. But she took comfort in knowing most everyone did.

  “Yes, Mel,” she said, keeping her voice deliberately at a normal level, though she had no idea why she bothered. Mel wasn’t one to notice a good example, much less follow it.

  “I’ve got something—” She broke off when Caro entered her office, r
unning her gaze up and down Caro’s length. Too used to Mel’s odd behavior to fidget, Caro stood still, raising her brows slightly in a gesture that had repressed many a man eager to get the fashion model out of her high fashion as soon as possible.

  “Is that another new dress?” Mel mostly wore pant suits that were pretty much interchangeable. She looked about the same every day. Her bleached cropped hair was always mussed from her habit of running her hands through it while she was thinking, and her lipstick was always worn down to a thin line around her lips from her smoking addiction. She got most of her exercise jogging back and forth to the closest outside door for a smoke break.

  “No. I’ve had it a couple of years.”

  Mel ran her fingers through her hair and Caro tried not to wince. “It was bad enough when Tess started hanging around here to smooch with Mike. I don’t think the place can take too many high-society types.”

  “Is that why you wanted to see me?” Caro was half amused. What was she supposed to do? Toss out her wardrobe and start showing up in jeans and a leather jacket?

  “No. I’ve got something better to do than worry about what people are wearing. So long as you turn in decent copy you can come to work nude for all I care.” She gave a short bark of her trademark laughter. “No. Then the guys would never get any work done. I insist on at least a G-string.”

  Caro stiffened. The term G-string brought back the afternoon when her seemingly perfect life had turned out to be a total sham, and Jonathon a lying cheat.

  Mel cleared her throat and mumbled something, which only embarrassed Caro more. Of course everyone in town knew all the sordid details of her breakup. She wondered why she even stayed on in Pasqualie with nothing but bad memories and a population that knew her most intimate humiliation.

  “I’ve got an assignment for you,” Mel said briskly, staring at a sheet of paper in her hands.

  Pulling her mind back to the present, thankful once more that she had work to keep her thoughts off her troubles, she asked, “What is it?”

  “Sit down.”

  That was odd. Mel never invited anyone to sit. She wasn’t one for idle chitchat and wasting time.

  Caro searched behind her for a chair, located one under a pile of old newspapers, which she pushed to the floor, and sat. The fake leather seat squeaked in protest as though it wasn’t sat on very often.

  Mel was running her fingers through her hair again. Absentmindedly, she pulled a cigarette from a dented pack and stuck it in her mouth. She didn’t light it; even she’d given up trying to fight the city’s no-smoking bylaws.

  “I have a story I think might interest you,” she mumbled around the cigarette. “A wildlife refuge right here in Pasqualie.”

  “What?” How could such a project be happening without her, when she’d conceived the idea. She’d organized fund-raisers, bullied and cajoled Jon into giving up a chunk of land the Standard owned out past the building that housed the printing press. When he’d bought the building it had come with a huge parcel of land, and she thought he’d actually been quite pleased to give some up for a good cause.

  “Think of the great P.R.,” she’d teased.

  “I am. I am,” he’d retorted, but at the time she’d believed they shared a common cause.

  Since a recent municipal corruption scandal had been exposed by Mike Grundel and Tess Elliot, the mayor and council were now sticklers for following every law, statute and bylaw to the letter. The wildlife refuge could go ahead only if its founders ensured that the refuge was self-supporting and wouldn’t need to be bailed out by city coffers. Jon had gone one better, promising that the Standard would take responsibility for the refuge—as a corporate charity, backed by him personally.

  It was the day they’d found out the project could go ahead that she and Jon had last made love. The next day she’d come home from work to find Lori gyrating on her three-hundred-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets. Then Caro and Jon had split up and the last thing on her mind—or presumably his—had been the refuge.

  She wondered who had picked up the dropped ball. Tess’s mother, Rose Elliot, was one of the volunteer board members, as was Jeremy Dennis, the director of Bald Is Beautiful, an organization dedicated to preserving bald eagles in the area.

  Was it one of them who’d continued to work on the project?

  She and Jon had also recruited a schoolteacher, since they believed the refuge offered educational opportunities for local schoolkids. A member of council sat on the board, as did a couple of members at large from the community. Any of them could have resurrected the idea, but would it have killed them to give her a call?

  She immediately felt ashamed of herself for being so small-minded as to feel offended they’d gone ahead without her. For all she knew this was a completely different group working on another refuge. All that mattered was the shelter. She and Jon had become known as the people to see in town if you came across a wounded or orphaned animal. Between them and their veterinarian they’d nursed injured eagles, orphaned bear cubs, and any number of deer, squirrels, rabbits and small birds hit by cars. Some they couldn’t save, but a gratifying number were back swimming, flying or running in their natural habitat.

  Aware that Mel hated editorializing, she didn’t squeal, “That’s great,” as she wanted to, but merely nodded, flipped open her notepad and said, “Go on.”

  Questions were racing through her head. Who was behind this new effort? Would they be able to use the Standard land? Might she be able to volunteer in some capacity without affecting her credibility as an impartial journalist covering the story?

  “There’s not much to tell. I wish we didn’t have to cover the story since Jonathon Kushner’s involved, but then we’d look like immature weenies.” She dragged on her unlit cigarette. “I hate that.”

  “Jonathon?” Caro stared at her, thinking if she wanted to act like an immature weenie she darn well would. And, depending on where this conversation was going, she felt an incipient weenie attack coming on.

  There was a pause during which she heard the background soundtrack of a busy newsroom—keyboards clacking, voices on phones or chatting. Footsteps jogged past Mel’s open door. Somebody was late for something. Wherever they were going, Caro passionately wanted to join them, and jog side by side out of here.

  “So we need to do a story.” Mel stared at her expectantly.

  “Are you suggesting I cover this story?”

  “Yeah.” Mel made a merry-go-round of the word, dragging it out to four syllables and covering her complete vocal register.

  Caro refused to lose her cool. She leaned back and crossed her legs. “What aspect of the story did you want me to cover?”

  “What aspect? This isn’t a Mideast peace deal, hon, it’s an animal shelter. You go out there, interview Kushner and give me five hundred words by Thursday.”

  “But Jonathon and I are separated.”

  “So what? That lowlife Marco Desudrio is my ex, but I still buy my corned beef from his deli ’cause it’s the best in town.”

  “Jonathon and I aren’t…on those kind of terms.”

  Mel leaned forward and took the cigarette out of her mouth. “Honey, take my advice. Pasqualie is not New York, where you could live your whole life and never see your ex. You either need to get yourself on those kinds of terms, especially if you’re planning to stay in the news business, or else get out of town.”

  Caro knew that. She simply hadn’t decided yet what she was going to do, and she resented being pushed.

  “Did Jon put you up to this?” He was doing it deliberately, she knew it in her gut. This whole animal shelter was nothing but a pathetic excuse to make her life miserable.

  More miserable.

  “A press release put me up to this.” Mel’s lips thinned, emphasizing the thin red line that remained on the very extremities of her lips.

  Caro had often wished for the courage to give her some makeup advice, but she knew she didn’t have that much in stock. And today, t
he only thing she noticed about Mel’s lips was that she didn’t care for the words coming out of them. “Couldn’t you assign the story to someone else?”

  “Of course I could. But only one person on my staff knows all about the project. Only one person gives a rat’s ass about saving a rat’s ass. And that—” she poked the cigarette in Caro’s direction “—is you.”

  It was undeniably true, but Caro refused to be manipulated quite so easily. “Isn’t there someone else I could interview about the shelter?”

  “Jon’s the president of the shelter society and he’s the one who okayed the land deal. Plus it makes the Star look mature and noble interviewing a rival publisher.”

  A flicker of reluctant amusement had Caro’s lips quirking. Mel was so easy to read, which Jon had no doubt banked on. “And if I interview anyone else we’ll look like a bunch of immature weenies?”

  “I knew you had brains underneath all those designer labels.” She handed Caro a press release and said, “It’s all set up for three o’clock today. Jonathon’s office.”

  “Not at the site?” The last thing she wanted to do was skip into Jon’s office. She hadn’t been near the place since the split.

  “There’s nothing at the site. Talk to Jon about faking something out there for our photographer, but the meeting’s set up at his office.”

  “Very well. I’ll do the interview by phone.”

  “Don’t push me! If you care so much about those animals, you should want to get a nice article in our paper. We’ll put a thumb-sucking blurb at the end telling people they should contribute blah, blah, blah. I hate those.”

  The list of things Caro would rather do than interview her husband at three o’clock today was so huge she could paper the earth with it and still have enough paper left to go to the moon.

  She’d been conned. But where Jon, and no doubt Mel, knew they had her was that she would do a lot more than see her ex-husband if it would help save animals.

  Still, if she had to see Jonathon again, she’d like time to choose the outfit. No one knew better than an ex-fashion model what messages clothing could send. She must have something in her closet in Drop-Dead.